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Anonymous Crobar writes "Microsoft has received a patent for a 'digital rights management scheme for an on-demand distributed streaming system,' or using a P2P network to distribute commercial media content. The patent, #7,639,805, covers a method of individually encrypting each packet with a separate key and allowing users to decrypt differing levels of quality depending on the license that has been purchased."

Indeed, using DRM-protected torrent to distribute paid-for content was attempted by several players almost immediately by several provider when bittorrent appeared. And lots of less-legal sharing cites may encrypt the torrents so only members of the community could access its content.

In addition, having different levels of quality in different packets of the same stream (the more packet you have, the better the quality), has been proposed in lots of old systems such as the OGG/Vorbis compression (so that a web radio emits only 1 single stream and quality decreases as packet are dropped, instead of having to emit several stream of varying quality). In fact, progressive JPEGs work in a similar way (first chunks contain low-res blurry image, later chunks add the missing details), except that they are not a media stream but static pictures.

Meanwhile the patent was applied for only in 2005. The only thing that wasn't widely used before, is using separate key on each different "quality" packets. But it looks almost straight forward given the other technologies.

It's a great way of monetizing uncontrollable distribution channels. Easily allow anyone and their goldfish to distribute large content freely, and effectively charge at the codec level. Certainly solves a good half of the people-steal-everything problem. The patent's still stupid, but the idea's great -- I'd support a two-year patent certainly.

I'd pay, but I want the assurance that Big Content's hands stay off of my media, ESPECIALLY if I payed for the better quality. If I can't duplicate it, play it on my TV or stream it to a laptop/360/iWhatever/wireless projector/blahblahblah then I'm definitely going to pirate it. The biggest issue I have with DRM content is that the model for DRM hasn't gotten past the whole "You can have it, kinda, but its really still ours" mentality, and I'm not counting on codec-levels being the only "DRM" going on here.

The biggest issue I have with DRM content is that the model for DRM hasn't gotten past the whole "You can have it, kinda, but its really still ours" mentality...

Your beef is with copyright, then, and not necessarily with DRM. Any copyrighted work is still, really, not yours. You can use the copy, but it does not belong to you. In a book, for example, you can burn the paper in it for kindling if you'd like, but you'll never, ever own the words printed on it.

You can purchase the book to keep at home, you can burn the pages if you like. You can also scan it and put a copy of it on your laptop or ebook reader too. Just as long as you don't send copies of it to everyone.

With lots of DRM'd content, you can't. And the industry that produces the audio and video is trying to force you to pay for every incarnation of their work, even if it's in a buffer. That's where GP is complaining.

For the record, I've bought music over the years, which I've then subsequently had to pirate for use in players other than the designated "official" player. MP3 DJ tables, music imported to home movies, old MP3 CD players in cars... It all needs to just work, and the only format that just works is MP3 without DRM.

How is making a copy "stealing?" You are failing to meet a key criterion by not depriving the person from whom you made the copy of whatever you copied. Stealing would be walking into my house and taking my hard drive.

This system will fail because nobody will download the restricted media; there is unrestricted media available at no cost. Further, the amount of time needed to extract the secret keys from the restricted codecs is minimal, unless a hardware crypto module is required. I expect that any software implementation will be broken within a week; an implementation using hardware crypto will probably be defeated within a year of its release.

Some of us stopped feeling remorse for the recording and movie industries when we saw how extensive their lies are. Like, the RIAA claiming that Kazaa was killing CD sales, when in reality they had record setting revenues during the height of Kazaa. Or Hollywood accounting. Or the claim that downloading is benefiting violent Mexican gangs. After a decade of claiming that they are suffering financially, I would expect to see RIAA and MPAA member companies all defunct or near bankruptcy, yet in reality these companies are among the wealthiest and most powerful corporations in the world.

Do you lay any claim to the data on that hard drive? Would not the thief merely be requiring you to line up your kids and take new snapshots of them, or recalculate your taxes, or re-download all your torrents? Have they actually deprived you of anything, by your standards? I'm genuinely curious if you attach any value to time and effort, or if because it is merely digital it can never have any value at all.

This system will fail because nobody will download the restricted media; there is unrestricted media available at no cost.

You're dreaming, at best. 'Nobody' or 'nobody who is already using torrents'? There are a vast, wide majority of people consuming media like this that have zero idea what a torrent even is, let alone how to safely acquire and use them. Torrents only appeal to a small, technically-minded group of people. Subsequently, few profits are probably lost to this crowd.

Further, the amount of time needed to extract the secret keys from the restricted codecs is minimal, unless a hardware crypto module is required. I expect that any software implementation will be broken within a week; an implementation using hardware crypto will probably be defeated within a year of its release.

See, again: minimal for whom? For those that were previously using illegal means to gain access to the content, or for those people who actually make up their target market. You know, the people who use money who buy these things.

Some of us stopped feeling remorse for the recording and movie industries when we saw how extensive their lies are. Like, the RIAA claiming that Kazaa was killing CD sales, when in reality they had record setting revenues during the height of Kazaa. Or Hollywood accounting. Or the claim that downloading is benefiting violent Mexican gangs. After a decade of claiming that they are suffering financially, I would expect to see RIAA and MPAA member companies all defunct or near bankruptcy, yet in reality these companies are among the wealthiest and most powerful corporations in the world.

On these points we definitely agree. They do in fact over-charge, and a certain backlash is to be expected. I do see the danger, however, in a world where everyone feels this way. Eventually there will be no one else to support the content you are obtaining illegally, and so none will be made. Any way you slice it, your torrents are funded by the good faith of others, and you are abusing that. If you really, honestly believed that the content held no value, and had stronger ethics, you'd simply stop consuming it.

>> Stealing would be walking into my house and taking my hard drive.>> Do you lay any claim to the data on that hard drive? Would not the thief merely> be requiring you to line up your kids and take new snapshots of them, or> recalculate your taxes, or re-download all your torrents? Have they actually> deprived you of anything, by your standards?

My private papers are not published works. They should never be treated as such.The only reason this would even be considered is the sick fixat

You seem to believe that the only way musicians can make enough money to create music is if ordinary citizens pay for every song they have a copy of, or at least that a certain critical number of citizens do so. Why not focus on the real money makers for musicians: concerts, business use, etc.?

I admit freely that there are other methods of compensation. I also fail to see the need to restrict the method on the topic. Pay-per-copy is valid, and does not need to be obliterated. Pay-per-copy need not go to the studios for the model to function, and as you're implying it could actually harm the intent. The content needs to be incentivized in this society, or other pursuits will suppress it.

Take this concept, if you will, to a larger, more collaborative work like a movie. Live performances are ou

Do you lay any claim to the data on that hard drive? Would not the thief merely be requiring you to line up your kids and take new snapshots of them, or recalculate your taxes, or re-download all your torrents? Have they actually deprived you of anything, by your standards? I'm genuinely curious if you attach any value to time and effort, or if because it is merely digital it can never have any value at all.

Pretty poor analogy. File sharers have taken the only copy of your data. Yours is more akin to breaking into the studio and taking the master tapes to an album.

Walking into the house and copying all the data off his hard drive is more the equivalent to file sharing. And even then, the arguments raised below about publicly released works still enter into it.

The data should be backed up. In any case you paid for the drive itself, which the thief, who doesn't care about the data but only the drive now has a free drive but you have to go out and buy another drive.

Would not the thief merely be requiring you to line up your kids and take new snapshots of them

Were you dumb enough to not back your data up, how are you going to recreate your wedding pictures? How is lining up your kids going to recreate their baby p

Hollywood and the recording business is in awful spot for politics. Almost by definition, they are leftists, first because the left more accepted the riotous lives of entertainers, and then, because of political utility of mass media. But, the left is increasingly embracing an open content world, consistent with its more socialist visions - like, if you can redistribute land, why put fences around IP. It makes no sense for any serious socialist to support copyrights and that's a huge problem for Hollywood

Consumers then decide if they think the extra benefit is worth the money and either pay for it or do without.

Thats exactly the point. There doesnt need to be a law made that says 'all content must be distributed this way'. If you do not want to provide digital copies of your work and deal with the hassles that come along with it, then dont. And do without the extra revenue that comes with a cost/benefit of some copies being distributed in a way other than your preferred one. And your example of sat radio

Hahhahahahahahaha, you're serious aren't you? The malware/scammers have been distributing DRM'd WMV files for ages, hoping to make suckers get rooted by their malware or steal their credit cards. Nobody distributes them except retards and others too lazy to check their downloads, this changes nothing at all.

It's not about the technology, it's about the monetization. For people like me, now 30 years old, successful adults with money in the bank, there is absolutely no reason to steal a $4 product. Except that there are when it takes weeks for delivery, or days for research, or going and and getting it, or waiting for it to come in, or waiting for it to be released onto physical media, or any other sort of delay.

The reason that theft is high-tech is because it can be. The crime industry doesn't suffer from ha

This technology wouldn't be used like a typical P2P network of people openly sharing files, since the files with by DRM encrypted, unless it is the Zune model of loaning out a file, and losing the rights to it, until that loaner is returned to you.

BT-style downloads make a great deal of sense for a company like Microsoft or Apple who is pushing tons of downloads.

Im sure everyone here knows your stance by now...but for those that dont, allow me to translate what you just said...

It's a great way of monetizing uncontrollable(by me) distribution channels. Easily allow anyone and their goldfish to distribute large content freely(at no charge to me), and effectively charge(I collect money from the freely given resources of others without compensation) at the codec level. Certainly solves a good half of the people-steal-everything problem.(except for the fact that you are 'stealing' others resources without compensating them)

Im sorry, but your business model is dying, thats why you have so much resistance to the current changes in the world. Allowed to come to an equilibrium, youd be out of work. You are completely free to follow whatever path you want, but when you start advocating for everyone to only do business a certain way because thats the only way you personally can survive, we part ways.

I use Radiohead of an example of the concept. Not as an example of what all music should be like. Personally, Im not much of a fan of them.

I see the music industry continuing on, and in fact being better than its current form. But music in of itself is of little value, as you say. However, the people willing to pay for a live performance IS of value. But I fail to see why a cunsumer of music cant directly pay the band. Can you give an example of why that option doesnt work for all genres?

where did I say anything about distributing copyrighted works without a license?

Im not interested in your prejudices, which you just fully disclosed with that assumption. Im interested in the way distribution will be done going into the future. If theres no attempt at compensation given for the use of the individuals resources, then the odds of this idea going anywhere at all, are nill

Correct. And if I had to pay for this item, you can be certain that I would not 'freely' distribute it with my own resources without a level of conpensation, be it a discount or whatever form it needs to take. How about for every 100 people I distribute it to using my resources, I get 1% off the next purchase?

And that is 100% acceptable to me. The market will decide. Either the torrent will die, or it will stay.

We dont need laws to regulate it. Thats just a sign of a bad business model. Would it make sense to have laws to regulate that you must buy one horse drawn carriage, even though this new thing called the automobile exists?

And it may be MY bias, but I find most of the 'business owners' who always harp how great the free market is, suddenly find themselves rushing to pass laws to protect them when the m

The average n00b probably doesn't realize that a bit-torrent transfer costs them something.That is a big part of the problem of trying to prosecute/persecute anyone for P2P filesharing. Many people are simply too clueless to realize that they are also uploading to therest of the world while they are getting what they want.

Also, resources tied to physical things like a computer or a room (the old movie theatreanalogy) still aren't strictly the same as ethereal information.

...how to put a torrent proxy service out there to read in a torrent stream and republish those DRM'ed packets as a non-DRM'ed version of the same data, or just torrent the key itself. Once the genie is out of the bottle its always a challenge to talk that genie back into that little tiny bottle.

That's a problem you have with any DRM. However, a system like the one described would be a fairly interesting way to deliver live content to subscribers without undue server load, especially if the underlying P2P system was network topology aware.

No, what I'm getting at is with DRMed torrents, the MAFIAA might actually back off on filesharing.

DRMed torrents may potentially receive the full blessing of both the MAFIAA and consequently ISPs who no longer have to fear the dogs of war, DRMed torrents will start getting a foothold and suddenly, regular torrents will finally have competition.

Why not? Bandwidth caps are driven by saturation of ISPs' outbound links. If widespread topology-aware P2P arises, there may be a move to cut caps on internal network traffic, as it would be a way for ISPs to differentiate without really costing them anything. Of course, this doesn't apply if you're a poor soul living in an area with only one real broadband ISP.

actually, on the flip side this will make encrypting every p2p download standard procedure - thus people who use encryption on their normal downloads will be doing SOP as well - it'll make it that much harder for the MAFIAA to identify people as "filesharers" when everyone's doing it.

I still the patent is retarded and there should be prior art, though. At this point I'd like to see our patent office refuse all patents at this point until they start focusing on quality again.

thus people who use encryption on their normal downloads will be doing SOP as well - it'll make it that much harder for the MAFIAA to identify people as "filesharers" when everyone's doing it.

Actually, I'd think the opposite. In order to flag "filesharers" one would only need to check the encryption keys against a list of those you know are good. If the torrent users are constantly changing keys, they would have to be freely available, or everyone would get locked out of the content.

Sounds like a quick way to kill them. Especially when coupled with a requirement that all torrents of copyrighted works be encrypted.

There actually aren't any "X... on a computer!" patents because patents don't work that way.

I don't want to disagree too strongly, because I try not to read patents.

But, I've definitely seen patents cited here on Slashdot which essentially take something we've all been doing for a long time (like, decades or more), and essentially saying "a computer system for performing <routine task>".

The essentials of the task are unchanged (and wouldn't be patentable) but it's on a computer system. I'm not entire

How can you "steal" something that is broadcast over an entire hemisphere? You and I are subjected to satellite signals of all kinds without our desire or consent. How is merely making use of that radiation we are bombarded with considered 'theft?'

No, I'm not a tinfoil hat-wearing paraniod. I am just trying to look at it pragmatically.

Now, I WOULD consider an UP-link to a satellite without authorisation to be theft of services (bandwidth, processing time, potentially introducing security holes), but to mere

Thats why I enclosed it in quotes. Copyright infringment isn't theft, but most media producers like to perpetuate that lie. The misspelling was entirely unintentional.

Conversations that only allow strict definitions of words are cumbersome. Copyright infringement isn't physical theft, true, but neither is any kind of data theft, or identity theft for that matter. This doesn't preclude laws existing to deal with it, despite your nit over the precise word used to communicate it.

"Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed...

(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000;..."

But, given that e.g. Photoshop CS4 alone costs $699, it is ridiculously easy to do just that. Even with music alone, if one assumes

1. A process for managing digital rights to a scalable media file comprising of truncatable media packets, wherein a different encryption/decryption key is used to encrypt each truncatable media packet having a base layer and an enhancement layer without requiring additional storage space to store the encryption/decryption key, comprising the process actions of:

Not only do they want to turn your own PC against you with their DRM, they also want to use your upstream bandwidth. All the disadvantages of torrents and all the disadvantages of legally bought "treats the buyer as a criminal" DRMified files rolled into one

Perhaps this is the reason why they(Microsoft) won't allow the BBC iPlayer on XBOX?They want to charge for it but the BBC charter/rules won't allow it.Will Microsoft make the BBC an offer they can't refuse and get them to switch to their DRM method? But the BBC can't make you pay for stuff you view via iPlayer?

If you only get the low quality anyways, why does it make any sense for you to be forced to pull the bits in the high quality version?
This is a reduction in efficiency and convenience.
Due to the long transfer times required for high-quality content, and very short transfer times required for smaller low-quality content.

There's a simpler solution to this: use keyed/passworded private torrents.

Make different quality versions different files.

Then the customers who purchase low-quality content don't get to download the same file as the ones who purchase high-quality content, and it means, less bandwidth and disk space is used.

If they change their mind and wish to buy a high quality version, they can simply download the high-quality version once given access.
Upon successful download replace the lq file.

This technology is superfluous.. it shouldn't be patentable, because it's not an actual improvement.

Inventions have to be improvements to be patentable... it's called useful discovery

As required by the constitution:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts...

Their technology does not offer an improvement versus pre-existing unpatented technologies in common use and simpler obvious ways of accomplishing the same thing, they do not have a useful invention.

The claim in the patent makes it clear there's a "base layer" and an "enhancement layer". The high quality version would need both, the low quality would only download the bits they need, and only have decryption rights to those.

If you read between the lines, what they're talking about is like a regular DRMed P2P distribution channel (BBC iplayer), but targetable to portable devices (i.e. the Zune) also.

It's clever, and useful if you're Microsoft, or maybe Apple, and have control over an ecosystem of

I think you may have missed the part where Microsoft isn't the one distributing this around, it's P2P! Those losers don't care how much bandwidth they're wasting! And hell, if they get pissed at downloading a file four times as large as is justified by the quality they've purchased, they can spend more money to unlock the higher quality content! IT'S BRILLIANT

I always have to laugh when people complain about patents on technologies they hate. Hello? They PATENTED it. That means nobody else is allowed to do it. And Microsoft of course, will fail at it themselves. Thus the effect of the patent is to PREVENT these sorts of DRM mechanisms from proliferating. Use your brains people.

The way to find out is to read the claim(s) in the patent instead of going by the abstract (or, worse yet, someone else's interpretation of the abstract). If you do the same thing the entire claim says, then you're infringing.

(There are other ways to infringe, such as contributory infringement, which don't require doing what the entire claim says. For example, if you sell a device whose sole purpose is to help someone else infringe a claim, then you're an infringer also. Most of the time, this involves m

So, basically MS wants ME to contribute to distribute THEIR content I already paid for and then actually download MORE then I can actually use?

A: Hidden charges, shipping charges laws. A product should have a clear price. But say I download such a product on a paid connection. Then I pay not just for the license but also for the download AND upload. And if my license is not for the full product, I download stuff I don't need. So, how much does a $7 movie cost? Really?

The company went under, a lot of us never got our last paycheck, I work for the air force now.

blah!

Anyway, I don't think what I did would qualify as prior art. The key claim seems to be a multi level key system for unlocking different bit rate/qualities for a downloaded file. What I did was related to live video streaming using P2P to reduce server load.

That's the whole futility in thinking that you can pass just a few more laws to get law breakers to obey.

They pass laws against guns when shooting people is already illegal. Do you think the murderer will stop because of 1 more law?

They pass laws against prostitution because "the girls get beat up". Assault is already illegal. Do you think that an assailant will halt at the law against prostitution when the other law didn't stop him?

They pass laws against drug use because it "leads to crime", despite tha